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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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Discussions about homelessness always remind me of this Onion headline. If almost every country in the world, including your own several decades ago, doesn't have the problem you have, then maybe you should stop doing whatever it is you're doing.

Scott clearly gets it:

And yet ordinary people should be able to say “I want to stop choking on yellow smoke every time I go outside” without having to learn the difference between hexamethyldecawhatever and tetraethylpentawhatever.

despite then insisting that all his readers learn the difference. And he even knows what solutions will work:

If your plan is “be cruel and draconian”, then that will work. It might even be justifiable, if it helps protect other vulnerable people - I talk more about this here. But please admit it. Don’t mumble something about “I just want these poor people to be able to get the treatment they deserve yet don’t know how to ask for” before going back to railing against the damn liberals.

The issue here isn't that people are being hypocritical by mumbling platitudes about treating homeless people better, it's that liberals will smear any plan that doesn't center the welfare of "unhoused individuals" as cruel and draconian and thereby force others to use their framework as a prerequisite for engagement rather than telling the truth, namely "we don't give a damn what happens to those people; just get them off our streets." I don't even see how restoring the old system of mental institutions would be any less cruel than letting these people kill themselves slowly and publicly, though I suppose people might oppose it on libertarian grounds.